Category: 2021

Award-2021

2023 ASEI Awards Announcement

ASEI to honor Engineers, Scientists and Community leaders at ASEIcon2023, celebrating 40 years since inception

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI), a 501 c3 non-profit, is hosting ASEIcon2023 – it’s 35th National Convention focusing on NextGeneration Engineering  Innovations. The awards banquet following the convention will be held on September 30th, 2023 at Hotel Radisson, Southfield, MI.

This convention co-chaired by Rakesh Patel and Muthu Sivanantham will consist of keynotes as well as parallel tracks covering Automotive, Mobility, Infrastructure and Energy. It is being hosted by the ASEI Michigan Chapter and is a milestone event of significance as it is returning to the birthplace of ASEI in its 40th year after several years of being hosted in other chapters.

After an open public solicitation where both ASEI members and non-members were eligible to nominate in different categories, a rigorous vetting process by the ASEI awards committee ensued. As a result, this year’s outstanding achievement awards go to the following individuals:

ASEI Lifetime Achievement : Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud

ASEI Entrepreneur of the Year: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder & CEO, DevRev

ASEI Scientist of the Year : Dr Nina Tandon, CEO, Epibone

ASEI Engineer of the Year- AI: Rama Akkiraju, Vice President, NVIDIA

ASEI Engineer of the Year- Transportation & Sustainability: Dr Praveen Vayalamkuzhi, CEO MobilityVision

ASEI Service Excellence Award : Surbhi Kaul, Vice President, Juniper Networks

Hari B. Bindal ASEI Founder’s Award : Muthu Sivananthan, Energy & Materials Industry Solutions Leader, Dassault Systèmes

ASEI President Piyush Malik said, “ASEI is a great organization providing a broad platform for the Indian origin engineers, technologists and young scientists providing wide networking and learning opportunities for all technology & engineering professionals. On behalf of ASEI, I am very pleased to recognize & congratulate each awardee for their dedication, hard work, and exemplary contribution in their respective fields.”

Further Details about the ASEI award winners:

ASEI Lifetime Achievement

Thomas Kurian

CEO,  Google Cloud

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kurian-469b6219/

Thomas joined Google in 2018 as the CEO of Google Cloud and through remarkable efforts has led it to profitability and fastest  growth amongst public cloud providers.

Prior to Google, Thomas spent 22 years at Oracle, where most recently he was President of Product Development. His nearly 30 years of experience have given him a deep knowledge of engineering, enterprise relationships, and leadership of large organizations.

ASEI Engineer  of the Year – AI

Rama Akkiraju

Vice President, NVIDIA

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramaakkiraju/

Rama Akkiraju, VP of AI & Automation at NVIDIA IT, previously held leadership roles at IBM for two decades as IBM Fellow, Master Inventor and the CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations.

 Rama was recognized by Forbes’ as ‘Top 20 Women in AI Research’ in 2017. ‘USA Industry Innovator of the Year’ and ‘AI Industry Leader of the Year’ are only a few among the many industry awards received by Rama over the years. Rama was a featured speaker at ASEI’s 33rd National Convention in 2020

ASEI Entrepreneur of the Year

Dheeraj Pandey

CEO, DevRev & Board member Adobe

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpandey/

Dheeraj is a serial entrepreneur, Founder & CEO at DevRev and a board member at Adobe.Prior to this, he founded and led Nutanix as CEO & Chairman for 10 years. Previously, Dheeraj was the VP of Engineering at Aster Data (now Teradata), where he helped build the product and its engineering team from the ground up.

Dheeraj’s entrepreneurial spirit has been recognized with a number of prestigious awards including Dell’s Founders 50 and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year.

ASEI Scientist of the Year

Dr Nina Tandon

CEO, Epibone

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-tandon-phd-mba-03595315/

Nina Tandon is the co-founder and CEO of EpiBone, a biotech company that grows bone and cartilage for skeletal reconstruction. With decades of experience as a scientist and entrepreneur, Nina is known for her TED Talks, has published in Forbes magazine, and was featured on the Netflix series “Human: The World Within.”

Recognized for her accomplishments as a female scientist and entrepreneur, Nina was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine; an Ernst & Young Winning Woman; and Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, among other awards. Nina holds a Master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and two advanced degrees from Columbia University – an MBA and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering.

ASEI Engineer of the Year – (Transportation & Sustainability)

Dr Praveen Vayalamkuzhi

CEO, MobilityVision

https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveenvayalamkuzhi/

Dr. Praveen, an engineer-turned-entrepreneur, possesses extensive international experience in transportation safety research, with a focus on engineering and education measures. As the Founder and CEO of MobilityVision Inc. he leads a science-driven organization dedicated to safe and sustainable mobility.

For his impactful contributions he has received honors like the Rising Star of Safety 2022 by the National Safety Council and Forty Under 40 in 2022 by the Association Forum. His pioneering transportation safety research earned him the title of Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 2023, contributing to social advancement.

ASEI Service Excellence

Surbhi Kaul

Vice President, Juniper Networks

https://www.linkedin.com/in/surbhikaul/

Surbhi’s leadership role at Juniper centers around enhancing customer experiences through the integration of Juniper’s Experience-First Networking initiatives

across every facet of the customer journey.

With over two decades of impactful leadership in product design, development, and strategy within Fortune 500 companies, Surbhi is a seasoned professional who has

spearheaded visionary product and engineering teams at tech giants such as Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Cisco.

Surbhi has not only served ASEI as its National Board member and on several ASEI committees, over the past ten years she has served several other community and alumni non profits.

Hari B. Bindal ASEI Founder’s Award of the Year

Muthu Sivanantham

Industry Solutions Leader;

Dassault Systèmes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/muthusivanantham/

Muthu has been serving ASEI for the past 3 years as the President of the Michigan Chapter. Professionally, he is responsible to provide game-changing Industry solutions to Energy, Materials & Manufacturing customers, act as their trusted advisor and promote Digital Twin Solutions in the Industry.

Muthu is a passionate Technology Leader focused on sustainability, climate tech, and carbon free energy with a special eye for advanced nuclear power. He has over 28 years of Industry experience serving customers from Automotive, Aerospace and now the Energy Industry with a strong acumen in Digital Manufacturing and Product Lifecycle Management.

Table : ASEIcon2023 Awardees

 Registration to the conference & ASEIcon2023 Award Ceremony is available here.

The evening of Sept 30th, 2023 will consist of a banquet  dinner and entertainment program celebrating winners of the prestigious ASEI annual awards and revival of the corporate excellence recognition program (CERP). The CERP awards sponsored by GMS Registrar, DEP and GHD will also be awarded by their management.

About ASEI

The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI) is a 501 c(3) non-profit aiming to foster engineering and scientific temper in the next generation of technologists, engineers and scientists amongst the Indian diaspora for the past 40 years. Through a variety of strategic programs such as UniversityConnect, MentorConnect, YTE, CorporateConnect and more, ASEI provides a platform for networking, career advancement, community service, mentoring and technology exchange for professionals, students and businesses in the United States and abroad. Members are guided by several objectives, including the creation of an open, inclusive, and transparent organization; providing positive role models, awarding scholarships, and remaining socially responsible. ASEI was founded in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan. Today, the organization also has chapters in Dallas, Southern California, Silicon Valley, and Washington, DC. For more information, visit: https://aseiusa.org

Media Contacts: Dr Thomas Abraham, Chair Media Relations [email protected], 203-329-8010 or Piyush Malik, President, ASEI  510-304-9890, [email protected]

MARS 2021

Mars Perseverance, Ingenuity & The Indian Connections : Kudos To Nasa ‘s Dr Swati Mohan, Dr Bob Balaram

After 8 years of hard work, on February 18th, NASA landed the Rover on Mars at the bottom of the deep valley. Named Perseverance, rover will search for signs of microbial life. Rover’s landing zone is assumed to be a riverbed that may indicate signs of life. Rover will collect rock core samples in metal tubes. Future missions will return these samples to Earth for extensive study.

Perseverance journey to Mars took seven months and about 300 million miles (480 million kilometers). Perseverance was launched on July 30 2020 and multiple trajectory corrections maneuvers were made to point the rover to the bottom of the deep valley. Perseverance’s Route to Mars is shown below.

Leading the NASA Rover Landing is Swathi Mohan, the guidance, navigation and control operations lead, and mission commentator for the Perseverance project. She has been working on Perseverance for 8 years and flying the Rover for last seven months. “Perseverance will be the first mission to fly terrain-relative navigation so while she is descending on the parachute she will be actually at the ground with a camera, seeing where she is with respect to the Martian surface, and choosing a safe spot to land”, said Swathi Mohan.  Terrain-Relative Navigation captures photos of the Mars terrain in real time and compares them with onboard maps of the landing area, autonomously directing the rover to divert around known hazards and obstacles as needed.

Landing test can be seen here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaVTxc8uxOw&feature=emb_logo

Another major accomplishment in this mission is to test the first powered flight on Mars, aka Mars helicopter. Vaneeza Rupani, an 11th grader from Northport Alabama was bestowed the honor to name the helicopter. She submitted her essay into NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest and was chosen among 28,000 essays and named the helicopter Ingenuity. Ingenuity team was led by Dr Bob Balaram. A Principal member of Technical Staff at JPL robotics. Mars has very little atmosphere, only around 1% of Earths. “Flying this kind of helicopter is equivalent to flying a similar helicopter on Earth at a hundred thousand feet” said Dr. Bob Balaram. Helicopter was built using Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Linux operating system and has a high resolution downward-looking camera for navigation, landing, and science surveying of the terrain, and a communication system to relay data to the Perseverance rover.

Kudos to Indian diaspora to assist in this monumental task of finding life on Mars!!!

Onwards to Mars!!

References:

Mars Landing – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ

Mars Mission team 

Swathi Mohan BIO 

Landing test

Mars Helicopter 

 

Insane Engineering behind the Rover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqqaW8DCc-I&feature=youtu.be

**********************************************

By Amrish Chopra, Director VMWare

Life Member, ASEI Silicon Valley 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING INNOVATIONS 2021

Science, Technology And Engineering Innovations – 2021 In Review

As we ring in 2022, there are a number of remarkable innovations that have happened across all engineering fields that we would like to share. 2021 was an unprecedented year. We broke new grounds and boundaries of science engineering and innovation were stretched. So the choices are plenty.

Our pick of top 5 advances this year to highlight for our readers :

1. AI/ML : Artificial Intelligence solves problems using neural networks which are based on partial differential equations that are hard to solve. Two new neural networks – DeepONet and Fourier neural operators make this easier.

2. Spacetech : As we watch James Webb Space Telescope launched in space it is rewriting cosmic history. 

3. QuantumComputing : Google, using a quantum computer, created a time crystal that would flip back and forth between two distinct states forever, with no energy lost or gained. This violates the second law of thermodynamics

4. Neuroengineering : Rethinking how the brain works: there is not a right brain/left brain distinction anymore. It seems both halves are actually connected.

5. Cleantech : Green Steel plants that emit less than 2% of carbon dioxide emissions as compared to 7-9%.

Additionally, please enjoy our curated list of more interesting links to explore advances in science and engineering further and deeper:

Article by Amrish Chopra – Life member from  ASEI SiliconValley . Amrish is a Senior R&D manager with VMWARE and has over 25 years of experience in high tech industry

He has been a founding member of the ASEI News and Editorial team that brings out regular blogs and publications

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

To Infinity And Beyond

It is dubbed as the single most complicated project that has perhaps been attempted till date and it took over 25 years and $10B in the making! Yes, we are talking about James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ).
This year, every woman and man on this planet received a Christmas gift. And probably the greatest gift in the history of mankind. The gift came from NASA (along with European and Canadian Space Agencies). While the world was celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on Dec 25, 2021, NASA launched an Ariane 5 rocket to carry JWST so that we may see the birth of the Universe- the Big Bang and the aftermath for millions of years.
The human-made engineering, technological and scientific marvel launched into space -JWST is the most powerful modern space telescope created and it is just beginning its month-long journey to give us the most intricate images of our universe, galaxy and solar system.

Over 25 years in the making through a joint effort lead by NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration along with contributions from the European Space Agency – ESA and the Canadian Space Agency | Agence spatiale canadienne, this new telescope is designed to see farther in space and, therefore, further back in time than any other telescope including the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST primary light gathering mirror is 21 feet across, about three times bigger than Hubble, and seven times more sensitive.

This telescope will peer to see the longer infrared wavelength light from infant stars and galaxies from as early as 13.7 billion years ago soon after the “Big Bang” formation of our known universe about 13.8 billion years ago as well as make observations much closer to home for infrared signatures of oxygen and water on exoplanets in our own Milky Way galaxy. By this coming summer, if all goes well with the various steps needed for a successful orbit, deployment and activation of the various systems, astronomers and cosmologists will start receiving data on the initial observations. As Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator said: “This is one-of-a-kind. It is the most advanced technology that is going to, if successful, open up secrets of the universe that will be just stupendous, if not almost overwhelming, providing a quantum leap of understanding of who we are, how we got here, what we are and how it all evolve.”

In a sense, the JWST is a time-traveling machine that can see what happened in the universe in the distant past. Dr. Kevin Hainline, an astronomer on the JWST NIRCam science team has given a number of lectures on the project including kid friendly version here that many of you may enjoy as well. On the NASA website, we can track the JWST as it makes its way to be deployed in space near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth – about 3.9 times further from us than the moon. As we wait to be “wowed” by what we learn and even more so by what we can accomplish when we put our best minds to tackle what seems impossible.

At ASEI, we celebrate the role of women in STEM and encourage DEI in workplace so  it is quite heartening to note that two out of four lead researches of the four most complex instruments (MIRI, NIRCAM, NIRSpec and NRISS) on JWST are women; Marcia Rieke, astronomy professor at the University of Arizona who worked on designing the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Gillian Wright, Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Center in Edinburgh, who worked on the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

As the world is captivated with recent advances in Aeropace – be it improving life on earth through exponentially efficient and economical space travel and  exploration  technologies or  space tourism or the possibility of colonizing Moon and Mars, ASEI is bringing some of our Aerospace experts together to conduct a one of kind event – the Aerospace Symposium for everyone. This will be the first event as part of our 34th National Convention on Jan 15th&16th , 2022 . Register now and mark your calendar. Don’t miss it! 

Post by Piyush Malik, President ASEI 

If you are looking to know more about the Aerospace symposium and opportunities to sponsor, feel free to reach out to Piyush or either of the Aerospace  Symposium Chairs Dr Shreekant Agrawal and Dr Ajay Kothari

DECEMBER NEWSLETTER 2021

December Newsletter Will Have You Excited About The Rise Of The Indian American Techies To The Corner Office

The December  2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent to all those who are on our mailing list till November end. In case you missed it, here is the web version. We also try to post it on our social media handles so you may want to engage with us there directly for feedback as well 

Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society especially the elections and the Aerospace Symposium as part of upcoming ASEI 34th  National Convention!

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team. 

In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate. 

Mentorship Works

Mentorship Works

Leaders who aspire to influence and shape the next generation of leaders look for young minds to share their experience with. ASEI MentorConnect is one such avenue to build connections with leaders, drive meaningful relationships and grow your leadership muscle. The first cohort of this structured program was launched earlier this year and will continue to invest time in those looking to learn from established mentors in the industry. MentorConnect is a benefit that the professional ASEI members can avail of every year getting matched with a mentor from their own industry and is based on an initial screening process at the start of each cohort.
In a way mentoring is a two way street and the ASEI MentorConnect made it possible for both mentors and mentees to gain from this experience as is evident from the success stories shared by participants at the culmination of the cohort last month. Here are a few testimonials from some of our mentees this year:

Muthu Sivanantham (Mentor: Mani Sundarajan) (Profile: People leader with 25 years of experience)

“Thanks to his valuable inputs and simple steps to help me with my goals setting, I was able to set these two leadership goals for this year:

  • Display leadership and make a dent in our Solution Offers for year 2021
  • Promote, lead and make significant contributions in a launch of a Leadership Program that my employer launched this year

In both of the above objectives I am proud to say I had been making significant contributions. Thanks to ASEI’s MentorConnect program which was a catalyst to make this happen. I would be remiss not to mention the ASEI network as a whole which is an excellent platform to network, learn from, and share knowledge with a wide variety of like minded Engineers & Science and Tech folks.”

Saravanan Venkatachalam (Mentor – K V Prasad) Profile: Technical expert with 20 years of experience)

“I have created a draft 30-60-90 day plan for leadership role (Emulation) and walked through with Prasad, with minor correction from Prasad, i have tried to adopt wherever applicable and proactively started leading without title in certain areas and which helped me to build some allies in shared services areas. I got few spirit awards from other shared service partners for value add activities and also this month there was an org announcement that going forward i will be reporting directly to my Domain CIO, which will provide me more face time with the likes of Chief Architect, Digital CTO, Business directors, CTO and CIO to learn and contribute and grow.”

Hemanth Aroumougam (Mentor: Abhiram Iyengar) Profile: Recent Engineering graduate, Purdue University

“I really enjoyed being a part of the MentorConnect Program. My mentor was Mr. Abhiram Iyengar and I had two 1-hour sessions with him. From just the two sessions, it was a great opportunity for me to learn a lot from him. I was able to get tips to improve the structure of my resume, obtained more knowledge about good strategies to tackle the recruitment process in the US, learnt a lot about his experiences and many more.  Thank you so much for giving me the valuable opportunity to be a part of this MentorConnect Program.”

Ranganath Gurram (Mentor Sham Kunjur) Profile: Manufacturing Engineer, early in career

“Though it is the first year, ASEI has succeeded in making sure MentorConnect serves its purpose, ‘To enable professional and personal networking relationships between mentor and mentee in a safe environment to share life experiences and guidance for professional and career development.

As someone like me who is in the initial stages of the career, this program will widen the career outlook. My mentor Sham Kunjur was very welcoming and approachable. I could learn a ton from his years of experience in the industry. I gained valuable insights to shape not only my professional goals but also personal goals. Many thanks to the ASEI team for this wonderful program, my mentor Sham Kunjur for all the time and support over the last few months, and Srinivas Gavini who introduced me to ASEI !! “

In addition to all of these practical tips and mentee experiences, we would like to leave you with 2 reading suggestions from our esteemed mentors on leadership:

Designing your life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

 

Invisible Women 

Sai Gopisetty is an ASEI member based out of Michigan and helps with coordinating  our MentorConnect program.

Leadership Positions Open

Leadership Positions Open- Seeking Nominations For The 2022 National Board

Dear ASEI Members,

The National Board of ASEI needs to conduct its election to fill the 2022 Board of Directors open positions. In accordance with section VI.2 of the constitution, we have appointed the following Board members to the Election Committee: 

Election Committee Chairperson: Jwalant Lakhia

Election Committee Members:  Dr. Thomas Abraham &  Suresh Ladva

Hence, the purpose of this communication is to request nominations from the membership for the ASEI National Board of Directors. There are seven open positions that will be filled through this nomination process.

You can self-nominate or nominate someone else for the ASEI National Board position. If nominating someone else, please get concurrence from your nominee before submitting the nomination.

To be eligible to become a board member, the nominee must be an ASEI paid member in good standing for one year, must have participated in ASEI activities at local or national level, and must have exhibited leadership qualities from experiences that would add significant value to the board and ASEI. The nominee must be ready and willing to participate in all (or almost all) board meetings and contribute by participating in ASEI activities including membership of various committees of ASEI. The nominees should become familiar with ASEI Constitution and Bylaws available at www.aseiusa.org   

Please click here to submit your nomination. The deadline to submit nominations is now extended till December 19th, 2021.

Sincerely,

Executive Committee of the ASEI National Board of Directors:

Piyush Malik –         President

Jwalant Lakhia –      Vice President

Ram Ramanujam –   Treasurer

Vatsala Upadhyaya – Secretary & IT Director

CELEBRATING THE FIRST NON-WHITE NOBEL WINNER IN SCIENCE

Celebrating The First Non-white Nobel Winner In Science

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1930 was awarded to Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman “for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him.”

More details on Sir CV Raman and his work from the Nobel website.

There is a story that we would like to share here. Dr. C.V. Raman didn’t have money to buy a spectrograph. So he shot a letter to G.D. Birla stating his demand in no less clear words: “Give me money to buy a spectrograph. And if you give me the money, I promise I will bring the Nobel Prize in one year.” G.D. Birla fulfilled Raman’s demand. And the rest is history.

Dr. C.V. Raman, who’s birthday is today (November 7th) , went on to become the first non-white nobel laureate in any field of science.

“When you want something with utmost intensity, the universe conspires in helping you get it”.

Diwali-2021

HAPPY DIWALI! + NOVEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER

Greetings!

Wish you a very happy and prosperous Diwali! Did you know that there’s a tech industry connection in getting a USPS  Diwali stamp ? Also, did you know how technology is making Diwali really happy for small mom-and pop retailers? All this and more in our newsletter that was sent out to all members at the beginning of this month.

The November   2021 edition of ASEI Newsletter was sent to all those who are on our mailing list till Oct  end. In case you missed it, here is the web version.  We also try to post it on our social media handles so you may want to engage with us there directly for swift interations.

Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society!

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team. 

In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.